The present invention relates to a cooked pureed food product, particularly a cooked pureed meat product, and to a process for making formed pureed food products from their original cooked counterparts. The resulting product resembles the original cooked food in portioned forms, and can be reheated to about 180-200.degree. F. for serving in commercial operations.
The pureeing of foods in healthcare facilities is common practice for feeding patients with impaired swallowing or chewing abilities. Typically, a liquid is added to make the food into a puree which is more fluid and facilitates swallowing; however, two problems exist with this basic approach. First, many long term healthcare patients die from aspiration. Since purees contain free liquid which presents the danger of aspiration, this approach is less than adequate for such patients. Second, most pureed foods have the same unpleasant visual appearance. Patients who are mentally alert, but eating-impaired, have little desire to eat such foods, and as a result, some patients suffer from reduced food consumption and malnutrition. Nutritional supplements, therefore, become necessary in order to compensate for this reduced food consumption.
Prior attempts have been made to re-form meat products. Examples of such attempts at re-forming meat products include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,544,560 to O'Connell and U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,210 to O'Connell et al. These patents describe the re-forming of meat products by binding a raw meat product. Although the re-formed product may subsequently be cooked during processing and sold as a cooked product, it is re-formed prior to cooking. More specifically, the protein from a raw meat product is used to bind the re-formed end product which is also raw. Since proteins in cooked meats are denatured, having little or no binding capability, the processes described in these two prior patents are not applicable to re-forming previously cooked meats. Because the re-formed meat product of these two patents is raw, more than a mere reheating of the product is required before it is ready for consumption. Other examples of prior formed meat products which are cooked include mince bologna and hot dogs, which begin with a raw finely chopped emulsion and yield a cooked product with too great of a bind for eating-impaired patients.